Creative Inspirations: Marian Bantjes, Graphic Artist

Author

Updated

11/10/2011

Released

9/16/2011

Graphic designer Marian Bantjes has collaborated with numerous design legends, including Debbie Millman from Sterling Brands, Michael Bierut and Paula Scher from Pentagram/NY, Sean Adams from AdamsMorioka, and Stefan Sagmeister—all of whom are featured in this film. This Creative Inspirations was shot on location in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, and Marian's home and workspace near Vancouver, where Marian shares her views on design and designers. We also visit her distinctive one-woman show at the Ontario College of Art & Design.

In Bonus Features, Marian talks about her creative process at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto.

Skill Level Appropriate for all

2h 18m

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83,863

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- [Marian] When I'm looking at a piece of mine,I want to assess it by:Is there a sense of wonder?Does it invoke curiosity?Is there a sense of joy?Really, my ultimate goal isto get people to notice itand to do a double take,to spend time with the piece.I think it's a really valid way of working,of capturing attention and interestand getting messages across as well.

- What's really fun about working with Marian Bantjesis that she has the capacity to surprise you.What she does is beautiful,but it's beauty the hard way.It really is.People can look at thatand whether they like it or don't like it,whether they get it or don't get it,they can tell that someone really cared about this.- If you're forced to stop and really pay attentionto something, it sticks because you've had to do work.

And that's where Marian's work, I think is so remarkablein terms of, you have to work at it.It invites you to work at it.It seduces you into looking at itand trying to figure out,how is this made?What is going on here?And the more time you spend on it,the more intimate you become with the piece,the more value it has mnemonically.Because she puts so much effort into itand it's so intricate, it sticks.- Marian has never been interestedin financial success.

She's not motivated by that.I don't think she's unhappy that she has some,but I think that she's really motivatedby making a difference with her work.She's really motivated by uncoveringwhat is possible with art and design.(audience cheering)- I'm gonna begin by reciting a poem.

Oh beloved dentist,Your rubber fingers in my mouth,Your voice so soft and muffled.Lower the mask, dear dentistLower the mask(audience laughing)So I am one of those peoplewith a transformative personal story.Six years ago, after 20 years in graphic designand typography, I changed the way I was workingand the way most graphic designers workto pursue a more personal approach to my work,to simply make a living doing something that I loved.

I left my company.I had a buyout from my business partner,and I had enough money to survive for a year.That year came and went, and I didn't get any work.However, I did start to get praise.I started to get emails from people saying,"Hey, I saw this."It's really great."They still weren't saying, "We want to hire you,"but least I was getting the feedback that I neededto know that I wasn't wasting my time.

When I was working with my design company, Digitopolis,I worked in the same way that most graphic designers workwhich is what I call a strategic modelin that you don't have a particular style.Your job is to meet with the client,determine their needs,determine what is the right strategy for them,whether you're going to do a websiteor a brochure or whatever that is,and what is the right approach and the right lookand all that other stuff for them.

I had already started making work for the companythat was essentially a precursorof the kind of work that I do now.I knew that there was a market for it.I mean, people responded very well to it.But either due to the market in Vancouveror the type of business that we were in,we weren't really able to sell that to our clients.And so, I felt that I had this kind of splitbetween what I believed in,what I thought was interesting,what I thought was progressive,the kind of work that I wasn't actually seeingin the marketplace, and the kind of workthat we were doing which was very much divorcedfrom me personally.

And I wanted to create somethingthat would affect people in a stronger way.So I no longer meet with a clientto determine their needs.I no longer deal with printers.I no longer do all those really difficult things.I let the designer do that.Um, that's what they get paid the big bucks for.And what I do is,they've made a strategic decision.Part of that decision has been,let's hire Marian Bantjes.

And I'm sort of a little bit moreand a little bit less than what an illustrator isin that I often create custom typography.I'm sometimes asked to work with the layout as well aswhatever it is I'm bringing to it.And on the less side, well,if somebody wants something,a picture of a cat, I'm not the person to come to.That's not what I do.- What she is doing is demonstratingthat design can be personal,that you can have a personal voice in it,that it can bespecific to one human being, not general.

She is doing something that only she can do,and illustrators do that.Her work is probably more akin to illustrationin terms of how people hire her,because it may be that an art directoror somebody who's already shaped something should bewould hire her to do it.For example, my partner, Michael Bierut,hired her to work on one of his Yale postersbecause the subject matter requiredone of her Baroque forms of typographywhich she created.

She is really functioning to a degreelike an illustrator.Now you can call that a graphic artist.You can call it just a graphic designer.You can it an illustrator.It really doesn't matter.It's that her work is so specific to herthat she has a personal style.- Quite often I see people do somethingthat's really unexpected because she'll dosomething unexpected.Just last week a student came to meand said, "I was thinking about Marian's sugar piece."And it occurred to me, I didn't have to make this"with paper."I'm like, "Exactly.

"Yes, it's not all flat screen paper."There's other options in the world."- I can remember a project that I worked onwith her once where it wasI thought I'd pictured in my mind pretty muchexactly what I wanted.And I sort of said, "Marian, this is pretty simple."What we need you to do is just something"that's like this that has these characteristics"and the rule of the game is it has to like line up here"and do this other thing and do that here."And as I recall, she actually did dutifully,I think as a favor to me, the thing I asked for.

And then she said, "Or you could do it like this."And then she did this completely other thing.And of course, that completely other thingis the thing that everyone loved.You can always tell when it's somethingthat has someone's heart in itwhen they discovered something newwhile they were doing it.And I think the preferred option that Marian sent,which everyone liked, had that kind of light inside itthat the thing she just simply did under orders from mejust did not.And I think that's sort of why she'll keep moving forwardsand why she'll kind of keep making discoveries,that she just resists the idea of kind ofgoing on autopilotand doing that thing she knows how to do so well.